Book 6 of the Jane Whitefield series! Just so good, impossible to put down! ( )

After living with her husband quietly for five years, Jane Whitefield is contacted by a young pregnant girl seeking refuge. Of course, Jane cannot refuse and helps her escape, but the runner makes a mistake, forcing Jane to mount a daring rescue. ( )

BOTTOM-LINE:
Surprising mix of depth and misplaced action
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PLOT OR PREMISE:
Jane is retired, ready to give advice if need be to would-be runners looking for her help, but she spends her days being the dutiful supportive wife of her surgeon husband. At a fundraiser for the hospital, a bomb explodes to hide the activities of a group of hunters determined to capture a pregnant girl before she can get to Jane.
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WHAT I LIKED:
As always, Jane is going to help. If she doesn't, there's no book, right? So yes, she helps the runner, gets her away, finds a way to get her safe, and Jane does some other sleuthing to help her stay hidden. I liked the "lull" in the action so to speak as Jane tries to return to her normal life after helping the girl, giving her some time to get ready for birth etc., and there is a surprisingly deep storyline about the fact Jane has been trying to have a baby of her own with no luck conceiving.
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WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
There are two elements in the story that I found a bit strained. First, Jane gets her away, gets her safe, and is helping her "get ready" for the birth. Annnnnd then just says, "See you later, I'll be back before the due date". Why does she leave? No real reason, it's stupid. With predictable results. Equally, the final parts of the novel seem more like Die Hard than a Jane Whitefield novel.
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DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the author, nor do I follow him on social media. ( )

Another very excellent Jane Whitfield. Still the best series. ( )

This is a novel that I didn’t like from the very beginning and didn’t get any better as it went along. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about this novel. For one thing, Jane helping out a woman that she never met, knows nothing about, but is doing so at great expense and by doing so puts not only her but her husband in peril is not remotely believable. It just doesn’t make any sense to me and I can’t believe any human being would actually do this. When the premise is this flawed, it makes it hard to take the novel seriously.

That wasn’t the only flaw. The characterization was poor as well. Christine Monahan, the pregnant woman that Jane was trying to help was so whiny and needy. It made it impossible to root for her, and I just wanted to get her off the page. The stalker boyfriend and the stalker boyfriend’s father were absurd, not remotely believable characters. Their motivations and their actions didn’t make a bit of sense. About halfway through, I pulled the plug on this novel. There were parts of it that were fine, but I couldn’t get past the major flaws in the novel and couldn’t finish it.

Carl Alves – author of The Invocation ( )